Not many men get to celebrate their mid-life crisis by having a scuba diver fall into their convertible while driving on a Los Angeles freeway. When this unlikely event happens to John Kovacs, he knows it’s time to get out. John figures he’s paid his dues after 25 years in the mortgage lending business, so he starts making plans to leave it all behind and move to the hot spots of Europe. Fun, travel and adventure await. The only problem is, he’s still too young to retire, so he has to have some sort of income to support himself while he’s having all this fun. What to do?

John finds his fate in a magazine ad for English teachers. In one fateful week, he signs up for a TEFL school (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and faces his own personal Waterloo in the unforgiving cauldron of the mortgage lending business. He handles this final confrontation with as much aplomb as he did the hitchhiking scuba diver and, Perry Ellis tie flung carelessly into the wind, he aims his BMW down Wilshire Boulevard for the last time. The future beckons!

Of course, Murphy is still chuckling at John as he finds out TEFL school in San Francisco isn’t quite what he expected. In fact, his month-long intensive course almost finishes him before he even gets a good start. But he muddles through, figuring if he can speak English he can teach it. He graduates on time and heads for the wilds of Europe. Technical difficulties steer his course away from his initial hoped-for destinations of Barcelona, Rome or Athens, and he approaches the Central European capital of Budapest, Hungary with trepidation and uncertainty. His high-school Spanish won’t be of much help here!

Mid-life crisis, career changes, doubts and confusion, job re-training, personal upheaval, moving halfway around the world, trying to rent an apartment and buy vegetables when one can’t speak the language. Will a middle-aged man’s dreams turn out to be nightmares instead? Will he ever learn how to order a beer in Hungarian? Will he be able to travel to exotic climes while supporting himself as a freelance English teacher? The adventures and attempts at making a new life challenge John Kovacs more than any corporate political infighting he’s ever had to deal with in his previously normal life. But he’s nothing if not persistent, and his endeavors to adjust to life in a foreign country have every indication of working out for the best.

Ya think?

Gary Lukatch was born in St. Louis, Missouri, before the term "Baby Boomer" was coined. He has lived in eight American states and two foreign countries. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri with a degree in Political Science, he served in the United States Army and was awarded the Good Conduct Medal. He then spent 29 years in the financial industry in California, New Mexico, Texas and Nevada. In 1999 he finally had enough. He quit his job, sold his house, sold his car, sold his furniture, threw his briefcase into the San Francisco Bay, got a tattoo, took a TEFL course (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and moved to Budapest. He now teaches Business English to the English-starved business people of Hungary.

He is the author of one unpublished work, Bankers’ Hours, which is (amazingly!) listed on amazon.com. He has also written many C&W song lyrics, sadly all unpublished and unsung, including such should-be classics as If I’d Have Met You Sooner I’d Be Through With You By Now, I Can’t Get Over You ‘Till You Get Out From Under Him, and his own personal favorite, She’s Got A World Class Body And The Face To Guard It With.

He has been inside an Egyptian pyramid in Giza, visited a Turkish Bath in Istanbul, crewed an America’s Cup racing yacht, climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa, flashed Beverly Hills, been a weight-lifting champion, floated in the Dead Sea, and eaten "haggis reeking, wi’ bashed neeps." He has his name on an Olymic brick in Atlanta, Georgia, and his picture in the Tropical Isle Bar in New Orleans, Louisiana. He has scuba-dived in Cozumel and skied in Colorado. He once owned a goat, but he NEVER owned a Leisure Suit. He can usually be found at Irish Cat pub in Budapest, sitting in front of a pint of Guinness.

So, the stage was set. My plans were in the works, the wheels were starting to turn, the ball was rolling, the horses were at the starting gate, the-- OK, I guess you get the picture. I had started the process that would enable me to embark on a new life, a richer life than the one into which I had been locked for the past 25 years and into which I thought I’d be locked for the next 25.

Starting next week, I’d contact a real estate broker (I knew pretty much all of the 73,124 real estate brokers in Southern California, so that shouldn’t be a problem) about selling my condo by the end of the year. I’d also research appropriate media for selling my formerly-beloved Beemer.

Now that I knew I’d be leaving all of my consumer materialism behind, the car I’d worked so hard to buy suddenly didn’t seem all that exciting anymore. I was about to live a life of material asceticism. I didn’t need THINGS anymore. All I’d take with me would be some clothes, toiletries and a few teaching aids. And some good walking shoes. All else could either be sold or go into storage.

So it was with a pervasive sense of well-being that I went into work that next Monday morning. The hum of the elevator carrying me to the next-to-the-top floor in Great Pacific’s modern-ten-years-ago building on Wilshire Boulevard was a soothing balm to my senses. I was no longer interested in the mortgage lending and claims business I’d spent so many hardworking years trying to learn. I’d absorbed it all, and now I could leave it all behind as easily as the elevator left behind the receding floors.

Oh, sure, I’d play the game for another few months. Hell, by this time I could play the game blindfolded. I knew the score, I knew the business, I knew the people. Om Mane Padme Om. I could last a few more months. I could coast through the next nine months without any problem. Piece of cake.

During my first few weeks in Budapest, as I walked the streets and explored my new home, I was assailed on all sides by a tremendous number of all types of impressions: sounds, sights, smells, tastes, experiences, adventures, thoughts. I tried my best to process them in a rational manner, but they came at me so fast - from around every corner and inside every shop and in the voice of every tradesman - that I just decided to let them all in and to worry about what they meant later. In this way I began to form my first impressions of the city and its people. So, in no uncertain order, just like they hit me, here they are.

Women: young, tall, slender, gorgeous, large-breasted. Some of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen anywhere - and I’m from Los Angeles! My God, but the young women here are truly amazing! It was an aspect of Central Europe for which I was completely and totally unprepared. My concept of Central/Eastern European women, colored as it was by years of media propaganda, naturally veered toward the blockhouse-figured, babushka-wearing, stout-shoed peasant type whom we all knew lived in these areas. Imagine my chagrin and amazement when I encountered literally hordes of young women who could easily have stepped out of a Playboy magazine spread on The Girls of Hungary.

Street crowds: my first example of Culture Surprise. Crowd manners are so totally different from those found in America I wasn’t sure what to make of them at first. People walking around Budapest always seemed so preoccupied, intent on going where and when they wanted, to the exclusion of all interest in anyone or anything else. I soon realized that they were just so - focused - that they really didn’t pay any attention to the other members of the scurrying crowds. Plus, in Hungary, the Personal Space distance is much, much closer than we are used to in America. And what was this penchant Hungarian men seemed to have for spitting on the sidewalk?